i’m sorry. but it’s too late for everything.

“if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” these words appear in a report written by a group of scientists that include james hansen, who works for NASA and has been researching climate change for most of his career. a new group, 350.org, has been established to raise awareness and fight for the necessary changes, though even they seem a bit despairing of the possibilities for success. as long as there’s money in oil this will be an uphill fight.

so that’s big-picture climate, in contrast to the small-picture changes that are breaking out in hurricanes and earthquakes all over the planet. likely half a million dead this year — if we’re lucky — at the rate we’ve been going so far. of course, there could always be a mother of all earthquakes in california, or a couple more in asia, or ten countries taken out by storm and tsunami. by that time, it won’t matter if the bloodthirsty and moronic juntas in power don’t let relief planes in, because there won’t be any relief planes to send. nor gas to fly them with.

so i turn to the New Yorker, hoping to distract myself from imminent doom (if nothing else, the cartoon caption contest in the back is good for a couple of grins). but i have the bad habit of reading most of the magazine, so i spent half an hour in bed this morning with The Last Bite, learning (among other gruesome food facts) how the farming of popcorn shrimp for the fast-food industry has resulted in the clearcutting of entire tropical mangrove forests. have you ever eaten popcorn shrimp at the mall? or at a chain like houlihan’s? it is a disgusting mass of flavorless substance that bears no resemblance to any actual shrimp that you might see swimming along, smothered in preservative disguised as breadcrumbs then deep-fried in week-old grease. yum. part of the reason that the burmese hurricane destroyed as much as it did was the fact that so much clearcutting had been done there. i don’t know whether that particular laying of waste had anything to do with popcorn shrimp, but the forests likely went down in the service of something equally easy to do without. without even trying, i can imagine a world without popcorn shrimp. unfortunately, it is increasing easy to imagine a world without forests.

there are food riots going on in 33 countries, right now. not just haiti, though theirs may be the bloodiest. the amount of food thrown away by one behemoth like mcdonald’s in a single day could likely keep the haitians going for awhile, and by now they’re hungry enough to eat a fecesburger (let’s call big macs what they are) and an unsupersized side of fries. and the sad fact is that most of the food that ISN’T thrown away goes into bellies that would be better off without it:

not one but TWO books entitled The End of Food have been published in the past two years, by thomas palwick and paul roberts, respectively. i don’t plan to read the books — it was hard enough getting through the reviews — but hearing about them just two days after i learned about rice rationing at big box food suppliers was pretty sobering.

so here’s how sick my thinking gets: maybe we don’t have to worry about food shortages because climate change will get us first. or we don’t have to worry about climate change because any minute now the global bird flu outbreak will begin. or hey, what about all those north korean nukes?

nevertheless, i have recently begun doing in earnest what i have done only halfheartedly (shame on me) for most of my life. conserving. thoroughly, not halfassedly, recycling. after years of back-and-forth flirting with vegetarianism, i am making the commitment and it’s final. i will NOT leave the computer on if i’m not using it, let alone when i’m not home (small exception there for unplgugged laptops, they can hibernate) (yes, i know that’s cheating) (mea culpa).

yet a lifetime of bad habits is not easy to overcome. i have a couple of tote bags that i use for grocery shopping, but i don’t always remember to take them to the store. i still buy garbage bags, having spoiled myself out of the twenty-something practice of using grocery bags for trash. i am using both sides of all pieces of paper, often more than once. i am recycling, not just tossing, the junkmail. i am unplugging appliances and have just decommissioned the UPS unit that has for a year protected my computer from fuses that yet to blow.

day late and a dollar short, i know. but. big BUT…

i find i am not the only one whose lifelong dalliance with conservation has recently turned into something nearing obsession. the awareness of impending –not far off, not someday, but IN PROGRESS — disaster has permeated the collective consciousness and i suddenly encounter energy-saving and recycling reminders in the most unexpected and divergent places. cashiers no longer give you the eviil eye when you say that you don’t need a bag. one of my co-workers was admonished by another in staff meeting for needlessly printing the document displayed on the projector. handouts are no longer routinely left behind after every presentation and in my corner of the corporate world, the “soft copy” has finally become king. (of course, effective use and comparison of soft copies requires ever-larger monitors on which to view them, which in turn have greater power requirements…)

writing in the face of doom, if you’re not quite writing about the doom, can be difficult. i ask myself, why finish my book if there will be no one left alive to read, much less publish, it? why blog about moronic politicians when they are becoming increasingly irrelevant?

but that’s all just another way of saying “i give up”. i don’t and i won’t.